I'd say it's time to change my original plug wires at 96K miles. I've
heard favorable comments on what are called "9mm" wires. If they don't
cost too much, I'd like to use them. Where to they come from,
performance shops, or are they the premium wires from like Advance or
AutoZone?
Thanks, David Anderson

I'd say it's time to change my original plug wires at 96K miles. I've
heard favorable comments on what are called "9mm" wires. If they don't
cost too much, I'd like to use them. Where to they come from,
performance shops, or are they the premium wires from like Advance or
AutoZone?

You can get them just about anywhere including ford motorsports, jegs,
summit, MSD, Crane, and Jacobs!
Chris
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>From: "Mike and Renee Skeans"
>Subject: FTE 80-96 - 83 F-100 advice
>
>I have a 1983 F-100 Flareside with a 302/AOD. It is
>almost broke in with only 177k miles.
>
>1. I need a new air cleaner housing, the original is
>cracking up. Any suggestions? K & N?

Yo Mike:

If you need to maintain emissions legality, you can't switch to an open
element. It's pretty easy to find replacement air cleaner housings at the
junkyard. If you want something fancier, you can get a dual snorkel air
cleaner housing from an '82-'85 Mustang GT. Any late model carburetor-type
Ford air cleaner housing will fit your Motorcraft 2150 carb.

>2. New exhaust system from the "Y" back. I think I
>would like to keep the single pipe and the cat. is
>already gone. How about a nice sounding muffler,
>deep but not too loud. What are you guys using...
>Flowmaster?

Again, if emissions legality is an issue, you have no choice but to keep
the single cat configuration. You can get headers, a new Y-pipe, and a
better cat-back system, but you're stuck w/ the single cat for legality.
Cat-back duals might be an improvement. If emissions legality is not an
issue, ditch the cat and run dual pipes all the way back from the headers.

A lot of people like Flowmaster mufflers. I'm running a single 2.5"
Dynomax muffler on my 1980 F250 w/ 351M, stock manifolds and a cat, and
it's adequate (not great, but certainly better than stock). It was cheaper
than a Flowmaster.

>3. Anybody have any experience with the
>performance/improvements of using the
>Jacobs electronics ignition (ultimate team?)
>or any similar system. Did it work as
>advertised for you? I definitely need new
>wires, cap, rotor and coil...etc.

If your truck has the DuraSpark II ignition system, it's hard to beat at
under 6K rpms. If you rev higher than 5.5-6K, then an aftermarket ignition
system is necessary.

You can beef up the factory DuraSpark system w/ a good high output coil,
metal conductor silicone insulated plug wires, and a dist cap/rotor set w/
brass terminals. There are several decent brands for these components;
Mallory and Accel come to mind. As long as you don't need the high revs,
the Ford DuraSpark II ignition system is adequate, cheap to replace (or
carry a spare), and you can find parts for them anywhere.

>4. My little Motorcraft 2bbl (Autolite 2150?) is
>needing a tune up. I like it, would you rebuild
>it or buy a new one? or replace it with
>something else entirely.

The Motorcraft 2150 is an excellent carb, easy to tune, and simple (and
cheap) to rebuild it yourself. Unless you're ready to step up to a 4V carb
(and the intake manifold it requires), the Motorcraft 2V will work fine.
You can get rebuild kits for about $20 at almost any auto parts shop, and
cleaning and rebuilding this carb will work wonders. I wouldn't replace
the carb unless it was really worn out and leaking air around the throttle
shaft. (You'd have a horrible erratic idle if it was.)

If you want to step up a little, you can look for a 1982 Mustang GT carb.
The '82 GT used a Motorcraft 2150 that was rated for 369 cfm, somewhat more
than the 300-or-so of the standard 2150. It's basically a drop-in
replacement, and you can use the standard 2150 rebuild kit to refurbish the
Mustang carb. I switched over to the Mustang carb in my truck about 2
months ago. For a 2V carb, it really kicks butt. If you want more details
about this, you can send me private email.

They'll work pretty well, but every now and then the pedal will go way
down with very little stopping power. On the weekend I decided to take
some action. Since I don't know when the fluid was last changed, I
started there.

Dark stuff, the colour of used motor oil. Yuck. I scooped all I could
out of the master cylinder, filled it with new and started bleeding (not
me, the brakes:).

Ok, bled'em until they ran clear. Here's one thing. The front left
(driver's side) caliper would hardly bleed. All the other wheels put a
good shot of brake fluid into the tube when wifey-poo (aka Shorty:)
pressed the pedal. THe front left just came out in little dribs. :-(
major :-(

Anyway, the original prblem is still there, every now and then the pedal
goes way down. After my test drive I felt the rear drums, they were
quite warm but I couldn't get to the disks to feel them what with the
shield in the way and all.

So, first of all, I suspect that the one caliper not bleeding well is a
Bad Thing(tm). I know little (ok, nothing) about brakes, but near as I
can figure out, it's the proportioning valve, the brake line, the hose
or the caliper. So I was going to disconnect in the middle and see if I
could get a good squirt out of the line/hose connection.

How the jumpin' do I get the hose off? I tourqed till I thought I was
going to break something, I loosened the brake line (steel one) but that
just staarted twisting the steel line, again A Bad Thing. The Haynes
manual is little help ("remove clip" What Clip?)

Sigh, so what am I asking after all this babbling.

Well, anyone have any diagnostics they can give me on plain old Power
front disks/rear drums?

Hey list people. I am considering purchasing a front end leveling kit for
the Rulemaker, my 1994 F-350 Crew Cab 4x4. I am aware of an add-a-leaf kit
from Rough Country that comes with teflon inserts and claims to add approx
2" of lift. Has anyone installed this kit? Any other suggestions? What
about removing the stock rear blocks and cutting them down an inch or two?
I would really like to make the truck either level or a little higher in
the front. Thanks!
Jerry Hinkle Jr. CPA
"RULEMAKER" 94 F-350 Crew Cab 4x4
"LTS-ROK" 80 JEEP CJ-5
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A vendor has just recently cruised by our site and harvested email
addresses from the pictorial and is sending unsolicited email (spam)
to list members. They've just been chastised about it. If it
continues, I'll announce who they are to the lists so you'll know
who to stay away from.

Last night, an automated web email address harvester hit our site
and nearly brought it down. I fought with the stupid thing for 4
hours because it was stuck cycling through our shopping cart pages.
The web logs were building up faster than I could remove them.

Due to these two recent episodes, I'm going to revert back to a
policy I used to have on the web site: all email addresses on the
site will now have *spam-remove* in the middle of the address. This
will help prevent address harvesting.

I just did some investigation and found who hit our server last night.
Check this out..... and read it all before you send any nasty email
to the spammer if you're one of the recipients.

Our logs indicated that IP 209.67.161.130 was the culprit. I did a
lookup and that resolved to globalpac.com

The spammer, John's F100s, was using kminet.net for the email server.
Did a lookup on kminet.net and guess what? Its hosted by globalpac.com!

Do not jump down John's F100s for this. They were, in many ways, a
victim, just like Ford Truck Enthusiasts and many of the list members.
The email address harvester from kminet.net caused major damage to my
shopping cart database and its going to take a while to rebuild.
Kminet.net is getting billed for all my time fighting off their attack.

I just got done talking to Diana Wall, of John's F100s. She was
pretty distraught. She was told by the marketers at kminet.net that
the mailing list they provided contained addresses of people who had
requested Ford truck products. As is sometimes the case, an innocent
victim can have their reputation ruined by the deceit of a spam
company. Diana had no idea that kminet.net just harvested the addresses
from our site, and who knows how many other Ford truck sites. She
didn't know it was spam, she thought the people wanted the emails.

For the record, Diana extends her deepest apologies. She offered to
email the people who were spammed but was afraid that it might make
matters worse. John's F100 has a good reputation in the classic
Ford truck community and I don't think this incident should change
that. Please send complaints to kminet.net as they are the true culprits.
I'm preparing an invoice right now to kminet.net for all the time I
spent last night fighting this off.

Help!! Is my 94' F-150 4WD (5.8L) posessed by demons?
1) The symptoms:
The transmission (E4OD) intermittantly goes into neutral (even worse
is when it comes back into gear- better be off the gas when that happens!)
Some times occurs at shift point, sometimes at cruise, sometimes at parking
lot speeds. Every now & then it only has a mild case of confusion wherre it
just unlocks/locks the torque converter at cruise. Intermixed with all that
is an occasional hi or erratic idle speed. Occasionally I can associate the
problems coincident with road bumps -sometimes not.
2) Repair saga:
Rebooting the PCM (by disconnecting the battery) will damn near cure
the problems for a short time but they always come back. There are no
"hard" codes (111), but I consistently get a memory code of 122 (TPS
signal lo) and the KOER test passes with no problems (111). After bench
testing the TPS sat, I replaced it any way (that was the beginning of this
long saga) -no change. I then convinced myself (via reading TSB's) that the
TPS connector must be bad (tested OK though) so I replaced it with a
trailer connecter- no change. I then followed the TPS wiring back to the
intake manifold harness, replacing every kinked or blemished spot that I
could find- no change. I should also mention that the problem is aggravated
by hi ambient temperatures (which we get alot of here in Phoenix, AZ.), so
this summer was my breaking point . The symptons got so bad that I had
difficulty maintaining hiway speed at times- neutraling out often!
Then I came upon TSB #230A -an insufficient ground on the MLP which
causes the transmission to neutral out. It too tested OK -but hey, we're
talk'in about an intemittent problem here. So I implimented the TSB
recommended repair by splicing in a seperate ground wire to circuit #46 of
the MLP connector (happens to be the common signal return circuit). Oooh
baby -got some action on the hard codes after a day or so after driving
with that circuit grounded! Gone were the intermittant problems, replaced
by definite failures -3rd gear starts, no TCS lock-up, hard shifting and
more. Dumped the codes but had reached the end of my diagnostic abilities
without a break-out box and a trans tester ($$). Rebooting the PCM would
cure all problems for a short (and successively shorter) periods of time or
mileage.
3) The Ford dealer ($$):
I removed the ground wire from circuit #46 and hauled down to the
dealer for some profesional diagnosis. He diagnosed a bad shift solenoid
assy in the tranny. Cost me $465 (included a major trans service) to
repair. Now I'm back to the same aforementioned intermittant problems which
I have grown to recognize without even looking at the tach or speedometer.
The dealer recommends replacing the entire transmssion ($2300) and being
done with it. I'm having a hard time believing that this will correct the
problem. I'm also having a hard time parting with $2300. The transmission
operates beautifully when it is not experiencing these intermittant
problems. I suppose I could have the dealer spend what ever time it takes
to solve the problem, but at $68/hr and no gaurantees- it's not a good
option in my mind.
4) My plead:
I'm at my wit's (and pocket book's) end. I am looking to all of you
kind and knowledgable Ford folks to bail me out before I trade for a Chevy!
Any advice would be appreciated. Sorry so wordy on the letter.
......R.B.

PS: Also may be of some importance -the speedometer waivers, and the
faster I go -the more it waivers. As much as +/-5mph at 85 mph.

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